


Be the Ancestors

by EtcheStone



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Minor Original Character(s), Molestation, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm, Slavery, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 06:23:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11030454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtcheStone/pseuds/EtcheStone
Summary: Twelve tales, one for each ancestor, detailing the events of their lives.





	Be the Ancestors

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [You are the Grand Highblood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/512595) by [KuraiYukita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KuraiYukita/pseuds/KuraiYukita). 



_ You are three sweeps old. _

You know nothing but the strange man that is raising you and the massive, green manor in which he lives. He calls himself Scratch, First Guardian of Alternia, a servant to the being that is the master of both of you. You have not seen much of this master, and Scratch only mentions him in passing.

Your name is Damara. Scratch says that you will have no needs of a surname because you will never have a lineage. You do not know what he means by that, but Damara you are. 

You are dressed in clothes that you do not pick, ones that you do not particularly care for. But you know nothing else so you cannot complain. You are confined to only a few choice rooms that are adjacent to the one given to you, but they are all rather empty. Scratch brings you food at regular intervals, never a second off the dot. You have no toys and no playmates and no other creatures like yourself.

You are incredibly bored. 

 

_ You are five sweeps old. _

You are allowed to explore the manor! 

You are very excited at this prospect at first, but your hopes start to vanish after you begin your ventures. The manor is certainly very pretty, and very, very clean. You think you would be able to feel honored to live in a place so enormous and stately if not for the distinct lack of entertainment. Everything is neat and polished, yes, but there is nothing to  _ do _ . 

There are ballrooms and smoking rooms, dining rooms and billiard rooms, a dozen attics and over three dozen winding staircases. They are well furnished and spotless but there are no toys still. No games for you to play except to count each and every clock that you run into. 

There are a ridiculous amount of clocks. 

You do have company, though. You have discovered that there are other creatures besides yourself and Scratch that live here in the manor. They call themselves the Felt. They are rather odd. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they are all the same shades of green- which is only a few shades lighter than the disgusting, eye-bleeding color that is the whole manor. If not for their hats and your ability to look in a mirror, you think that you might never have known any color  _ except _ for green.

They really are an odd bunch. They don’t have skin like you, and are instead covered in a soft, velvet-like layer that is reminiscent of a pool table. You are not, however, surprised by their lack of horns. Only one of them stands out to you among the rest, and that it the black lady with a coat made of stars and skin as hard as nails. 

You would not describe any of them as particularly unfriendly, but they don’t seem to know how to act around a young troll like yourself. None of them act anything like Scratch, who seems to disapprove of you spending time around them all and learning to play cards. 

 

_ You are six sweeps old. _

Scratch is going to great lengths to isolate you from the Felt. He goes on and on about how you communicating with other beings will make you develop feelings like empathy and make you unable to do your job, or something like that. You tend tune him out whenever he goes on one if his particularly long rants, which is almost every time that he opens his nonexistent mouth. 

You find his decree rather unfair, and sneak out of your rooms to seek out the Felt anyway. They are visibly uncomfortable when you show up, and sometimes act as if you aren’t there, much to your annoyance. It’s not like they just tell you to go away, but they don’t make you feel welcome either. Except for Stitch, who doesn’t seem to care whether or not you stay away or continue to come around, and Crowbar, who seems sympathetic but unwilling to disobey.

You don’t tell him this, but you think that makes him a coward.

You hear more about this master of the manor, this being that apparently holds your life in his hands. Scratch refers to him with the greatest reverence, but it is very odd the way he does. Sometimes he talks about your master as if he doesn’t exist yet, or that he’s died a long time ago, and other times it’s as if he’s existed for eternity. His name is English.

You’re not very impressed, honestly. If it was so mighty, why have you not seen him yet? Why has he not come to see you, if you are so important in his plans?

 

_ You are seven sweeps old. _

You have decided that you do not care much for Scratch or for English. You have counted the clocks in this manor what must be a hundred times now, and have covered every square foot with your footsteps. You have even gone out onto the roof to stare into the dizzying abyss of stars, and still you are going insane with boredom. Scratch’s endless voice doesn’t help. When you were younger you found it funny, how he could talk and talk and talk all night long, but now it is infuriating just to be around him. 

You have been told of the planet you are to do your work upon. It is called Alternia, and it is where the rest of the trolls live. You plan to go there once you run away.

 

_ You are eight sweeps old. _

You are getting more and more furious. 

You hate the clothes that Scratch gives you to wear. You would rather wear one of those disgusting lime green suits that the Felt wears than the endless supply of blouses and skirts. 

Scratch will not cease his infernal droning about your destiny and of English- who you have yet to see still, by the way. You’re half convinced that it’s just someone that Scratch made up to try and keep you in his neat little lines. 

He is doing everything he can to keep you in your rooms. He locks the doors that you break open and then barricades them shut with his infinite amount of useless furniture. 

Who the hell needs that much furniture? Who the hell needs a house that big?

After your options are exhausted and you are left with no other alternative- no way out of your prison- you utterly destroy everything and anything you can get your hands on. By the time he pries away his barricade and bursts through the doors, your rooms are in shambles. Lamps are smashed, the bed is upturned and the sheets torn. You lifted the clocks using your every strengthening telekinesis and broke them gear by gear with passion. When he comes through you lift your chin and smirk, proud of your destruction and certain of the fact that he will have no choice but to let you back out. Certain of the fact that you have won and he will sigh heavily and concede to your will.

You are extremely shocked when he slaps you instead, sending you sprawling.

That is the first time that he lifts his hand to you. He tells you that you deserve your punishment for tarnishing your master’s things, for testing his patience, and for being an inconsiderate, arrogant brat. The world does not revolve around you and your fancies. 

You bite your tongue instead of saying that it doesn’t revolve around his either. You bottle your anger away and plan to escape some other way.

 

_ You are nine sweeps old. _

You are still angry. 

You take every chance you can to infuriate Scratch. You pointedly ignore his commands and his monologues, refuse his peace offerings of tea and cakes, and continue to break any furniture that winds up in your room. 

You learn more of Alternia. It has, apparently, been in ruin for some time now, and Scratch tells you that you had a hand in that. At first, you do not understand how, but he explains further. Using powers that you have not yet learned to harness, you will go back in time to make sure that things go correctly. There are important events in history that must be made to happen or else plans will go awry, and you will set those events in stone by being a witness and an instigator.

So he says, anyway. You have no plans to follow his orders. 

You have found a set of windows that Scratch likes to stand in front of and watch with his unseeing head.

 

_ You are nine and a half sweeps. _

You have learned more of Alternia, the planet that you would have gone to if Scratch had not taken you for himself. You have seen through the windows what the planet was like and how the trolls there lived.

You do not think that you could ever be angrier than the first time you see other trolls on a planet that should have been yours.. 

Every inch of you is filled with rage. You shake with it. Every molecule of your being burns with anger. You want to throttle Scratch. You want to rip the manor apart brick by brick.

He stole that from you. You could have had a life. You could have seen trees and water and felt the moon and the grass, something,  _ anything _ , other than marble and felt. 

Your hatred runs deep and your fits of anger become more frequent, more volatile. Scratch remains ever infuriatingly poised and mildly insulted throughout each. Even when he hits you there is no passion behind the blow.

 

_ You are ten sweeps. _

You have seen the face of your master. He came to you when you tried to escape from the manner, while Scratch was preoccupied with an intruder. He blocked your escape with his massive, behemoth body. He is unlike anything you have seen before, unlike anything you ever dreamed of. 

You cannot find the words to describe him. He is everything awful in the universe that ever has been and ever will be, and his spinning eyes see all. He is eternal and infinite, while non-existent and yet to come at the same time. 

You understand now that there is no escaping from him. You can kill Scratch if you chose, you could rip the manor and the planet apart but it would not matter. Your Lord will still have his claws in you. 

You have your first mission. The sensation of being thrust backwards through the fabric of time is a strange one. It is as if the world is spinning around you, swirling in a vortex of color and sound and smell. There is no blink of black or white, no sudden transportation. You see everything dial backwards as you go. You see the landscape fly by you and you are sent to another location. 

The strangest thing about this is that you can feel the time shift. In your mind you can feel it ripple and buck, bending beneath your Lord’s hands, as eager to be obedient as Scratch is. That is why you were taken, why you were chosen, because of your sensitivity to the way time works. The way it folds and creases, the way the paths align and stretch outwards. You have a gift, your master says. 

For a moment you are glad of the praise, but it is robbed of you the moment you set foot onto the grass. 

You honestly do not remember much of what happened after you took your first look around. You remember seeing trees, hearing wind, smelling pollen in the air for the first time. It had been a religious experience. You could have died right then and there and been happy. There was more, you know, but you were wary of it all being snatched away from you the moment that your Lord caught onto your joy. 

You do not remember the rest. Your memory starts again when you’re back in the manor, with Scratch tutting at you and your emotional fits. You’re an embarrassment to him, he says, because you are so wild and he cannot get a handle on you.

The Felt continues to evade you. 

 

_ You are twelve sweeps. _

You have yet to act, but you have witnessed now. 

You are learning to manipulate time on your own. It is hard, and difficult, and dangerous, but your Lord does not stop you and Scratch makes no comments. They either approve of your efforts, or know that even if you try to escape into the bowels of eternity, they will find you as easy as snapping a finger. 

Your first dozen visits are uneventful. Your Lord lets you wander the planet Alternia had been before it became a wasteland, lets you bask in the moonlight and watch the animals from afar. He warns you against interacting with any of them, but occasionally you sneak in a pet to a beast or two. You see trolls, sometimes, but always at a distance, and your Lord wrenches you away before you can get a closer look. 

Then the war.

You do not initiate it, or end it, as you are told will be your use in the future. You do not take part, which you are told you are never to do. You stand by and watch instead, which feels incredibly boring at first, and then incredibly heartless.

The trolls with fins are terrifying. On land they are just like everything else, but once they drag an unlucky victim beneath the surface of any water then it’s all over. You see bodies flailing in the water, struggling to breath and break free of the enemy that is made for this element. You see colors that you could not before comprehend bloom to the surface, billowing outwards in thick clouds. It is almost beautiful, compared to the way that blood splatters and seeps into the solid ground. 

You continue to watch, for now.

 

_ You are fourteen sweeps. _

There are new clothes. Tight, form fitting clothes that you despise and have that awful shade of green. You want something dark in color, something black or gray with highlights of your color like your fellow trolls adorn- used to adorn. 

You cut your hair in defiance, shear it short to your jaw. 

Scratch says nothing, but his air is one of disdain. Your master says that he likes fighters.

You wear the clothes, much as you hate them. You keep your hair short, though, as part a deal you make silently to yourself. They cannot take everything from you.

 

_ You are fifteen sweeps. _

You have been given a pair of wands to channel your energy through. It is the first gift that you rather like, and Scratch seems relieved that you did not snap them in half or try to stab him with them. 

A recuperacoon has appeared in your room and you can safely say that you prefer it to the bed. 

You’re not sure why you’re receiving so many things lately, but it can’t be anything good. 

You’ve also been told about eleven other trolls that are important to your master’s plan. Apparently not as important as you are, since none of them were kidnapped and made to live in a vast and excruciatingly boring prison, but important enough that you have to make sure none of them die before they’re supposed to. 

You have seen each of them from afar and you honestly can’t say whether or not you’re impressed. You have absolutely no knowledge of troll culture and what looks impressive to them- thank you, Scratch.

You like the one with dark blue blood. The big one with the arrow horns. Your master disapproves.

 

_ You are sixteen sweeps. _

You have gone through your adult molt and learned the use of the coon. 

You had begun to feel extremely lethargic for a few weeks, and began to itch along your entire body. Your skin cracked, like the crevices between Snowman’s carapace. Like a lace network along your entire body. 

The cracks were the color of your blood, raw and bloody. They hurt and they itched and when you scratched them they hurt more. You felt sick and exhausted all the time. The only thing that helped was being in the coon. 

Scratch was, of course, no help. He watched you suffer in his dignified silence without offering aid or advice. He seemed curious, and enthralled.

For two weeks you sleep in your coon without waking. When you awaken you are bigger. Fuller. Taller. Stronger. 

You are awkward with your new height. You stumble around and knock several things over by accident instead of on purpose. Your body has new curves that you do not understand or care for, and you have to watch your horns so you don’t knock them into anything. 

Your master is pleased with your new shape and gives you a gift. An elongated life span. It lashes through your body like a lightning strike, stretching your reality and filling your veins with fire. It feels like a thousand lashes crossing against you all at once, and you scream and writhe from the pain while your master watches in a gleeful manner.

 

_ You are seventeen sweeps. _

With your wands in hand and in your tight fitting dress, you have started your first war. 

It was rather melodramatic and, in your opinion, incredibly staged and unbelievable, but Scratch was pleased.

You were too, at first. 

Seeing so many trolls react to your presence with such blind terror and wild aggression was invigorating. You’d never had that effect on anyone before. It was captivating. Your blood boiled and your hands shook. You smiled for a first time in weeks. 

You didn’t understand why they reacted so at first. You realized later that it was because they had already seen you, in a previous time. 

What shook you, what racked you to your core, was the bloodbath that followed. 

You are not sure why you were so shaken. You had seen war before, seen trolls die and fight. You have been told that is what trolls do best: kill. They live for war and the spilling of blood. You must be particularly weak to see violence and have your stomach churn, to see someone be speared through the neck in the middle of begging for mercy and want to scream. 

Scratch is not impressed with your reactions, and has ordered you to get a better handle of yourself, to compose yourself next time. Emotions will not serve you or your master. 

 

_ You are twenty sweeps. _

You have started more wars, and ended a few as well. You are still disgusted and wrenched with every battle that you witness, but you ball those emotions up inside of you, lock them away where Scratch will not see how they affect you. You refuse to be weak.

You have had part in your first assassination, as well. You slid into a troll’s room in the middle of the day to whisper death into their ear. Your master is pleased with your efforts, but you do not live for him.

You are still angry. 

You have watched the arrow-horned troll from afar, and your master has ordered you to stop.

Out of curiosity, you acted as if you would disobey an order. You refused to warn a troll of an assassination attempt, just to see what your master could do to stop you. He has done nothing yet but watch. 

All thoughts of disobeying leave your mind the moment that you feel his power course through you, when you feel his claws gouge your body without leaving marks. It’s like a phantom is toying with you, tossing you like a cat tosses a mouse, playing with food. Your horn snaps off, but stays intact. You are blind, eyes gouged, for almost an hour after he is finished with you. 

 

_ You are twenty five sweeps. _

More wars. More death. 

It’s all the same now. It’s become a pattern. Sleep in your coon. Eat. Obey. Eat again. Sleep. Bathe, occasionally. 

When you have a stolen moment of spare time, you sit with Stitch to watch him work on tattered clothes. He is as silent and indifferent as ever. Another constant in your life. 

You have learned what the trolls call you. It’s a title, which apparently every grown troll takes on upon reaching a certain age.

You quite like the name given to you, too. It’s something frightening. Something that could instill fear in anyone who heard it, which apparently it does.

They call you the Demoness. 

 

_ You are thirty sweeps. _

You have met face to face with one of the eleven trolls. The purple one, the one that paints his face and is leader of that big cult. You do not know his name, but you do know how title. 

The Highblood is not startled to see you. He speaks with a familiarity that tells you you have met before, regards you with a respect that you have never before received. It’s a good feeling. One of the only emotions you feel now besides a general numbness, anger, and disgust. 

You tell him where the mutant is hiding so the Highblood can find him. He does not ask how you know, or what you have to gain. He only thanks you for the information, offers you a drink of something that you are wary to take. He doesn’t seem malevolent or insidious, though, so you do take it. 

It’s sweet. Tangy and sharp. It makes you cough, which makes him laugh and clap a hand against your back. You shy away from the contact and stare, and he apologizes at once, tilts his head up in a gesture that you do not understand. 

You have learned that for the first half of his life, the arrow-headed troll lives with the Highblood. You have also learned his name is Zahhak. 

 

_ You are thirty three sweeps. _

Scratch is getting overbearing. While he never mentions Zahhak by name, his dislike is painfully obvious. 

He hovers at your shoulder whenever you are in the manor, debriefs you down to every detail after every task you are given. He makes certain that you are never going astray. 

Your master is disgusted with your softness and reminds you of what punishment will befall you if you fail in your tasks. You feel his claws graze your skin and the humid puff of his breath on your face, the rumble of his snarl shaking your bones until your teeth rattle.

 

_ You are thirty four sweeps. _

You have stolen away to meet Zahhak for the first time despite your enormous fear of what punishment will come. You made sure that it was the first time for both of you. 

He was quite shocked to meet you, to say the least. He crushed whatever little gadget he was working on and damn near leaped out of his skin. 

You relish in the reaction that trolls have for you. The Felt and Scratch never had anything like that. They fear you and respect you. It’s so intoxicating. 

His awe doesn’t last long. Soon he’s demanding answers that you do not feel compelled to give to him. You don’t feel very compelled at all, actually. Under normal circumstances, you can feel your master, hear him as well. When you are around Zahhak, you can do neither. 

You have never been more thrilled in your life.

If your master cannot reach you, he cannot punish you. He cannot be angry. You cannot feel his anger coming like storm clouds.

When you return, as you must eventually do, you realize that your dress is a poor suit of armor to any assault. And even when it's left in tatters, torn from your flesh, you are not allowed a new one.

Stitch does not comment upon the state of you when you bring the remains of your dress to him to fix, nor does he ask what happened to it.

 

_ You are thirty six sweeps. _

Your visits to Zahhak are few. They have to be, to avoid detection as much as possible. Short trips, scattered among the timeline in a path that you make certain of is linear. He is all you have. You are tethered to your master, forced to return to Scratch and to him. You have to endure them and all they push upon you, and you refuse to give up Zahhak and the sanctuary he provides. You will have him if nothing else. 

He is unsure of why you come, but does not turn you away or speak to you rudely. He is quiet, mostly, and he keeps your visits a secret.

You are infinitely pleased with your discovery to be quite honest, despite your master’s punishments. You never would have imagined that there was a troll that could hide you from your master’s eyes as easily and unknowingly as Zahhak does. You can see why he is special. 

You startle an enormous white dragon with your presence, forcing her out of position and giving the high bloods the upper hand once again. You do not know why it is them that must always win, but what must be done must be done.

 

_ You are forty sweeps. _

Zahhak is quieter still after his exile, but now his silence is bitter. Before it had been out of preference; working in silence and being undisturbed. Now he broods. 

You share his hatred for higher powers and muse to yourself how you must be kindred spirits. He still does not turn you away, but it’s obvious that he does not want the company. He wishes to be alone to wallow, but you are not finished with him or his uses. 

You persuade him to aide the bronze blood in the last rebellion. 

You have seen the first troll come into existence, crawling out of its shell and blinking blindly at the stars, and you have seen the last, toddling around unsteadily on its legs before succumbing to the Glub. You didn’t need to, but you felt that it would be rather poetic if you did. Something you could brag about to no one.

 

_ You are fifty. _

Your master grows. Scratch is becoming restless. The world lies tense in apprehension for something that is long yet to come.

Everything is the same. There are still so many things for you to do.

You find yourself less angry than before. There is a numbness that has swept over you and your body. You don’t feel as if it is worth getting angry anymore. 

The feeling scares you.

What do you have if not your anger?

 

_ You are sixty. _

Zahhak has died of age. 

You are stuck now. There is nothing for you to do, nowhere for you to hide. No respite from the eyes of your master.

You had forgotten how awful it was to feel him at all times, to not have the option of stealing away when it all became too much. He is evidently pleased by this, by your agony. He laughs at you and your helplessness. 

You are stuck in a cycle that you were born for and there is no escape for you.

 

_ Your are sixty five. _

You visited the Highblood for the first time in his memory. He is shaken by it, wary of you and confused by your familiarity.

You see him again, later, just before the Orphaner meets his doom when you go to rile him up, infuriate him more than he already is. 

You can’t remember what anger is anymore. 

 

_ You are sixty eight. _

You are going to be replaced. 

The empress will take your place soon. Your master will have no more use of you and he’ll throw you away like you haven’t spent your entire life serving him. 

Do you not matter to him more? You have done what he’s asked, you’ve made sure every minute detail was in place. 

Is it because of Zahhak? Does he want a servant that will not ask for a moment of peace? One that will take everything he gives and chokes on their own gratitude for it?

 

_ Seventy. _

You have to be the one to recruit her. You have to go fetch your own replacement and bring her to your master, watch as he infuses her with his hold and then wrenches it from you. 

You will not stand for this. 

 

_ Seventy three. _

You remember anger. 

It burns hot in you. It tastes bitter on your tongue. It clenches your knuckles until they pale, stir your powers until they crackle and snap from your arms and your eyes in bright flashes in color. 

The fish does not deserve to take your place. She is arrogant. She has not been raised for this task. You were. You deserve. It is you or no one. She won’t be able to perform correctly. She’s blinded by her own wants, her own wishes, her own greed. Filled with emotions that you have never felt and cannot name. 

 

_ Seventy three, still. _

You meet her aboard your ship. Shortly after you watch her battery slump in his wires, plea for her to come rescue him from the pain with his last breath. 

She looks startled to see you. There is a glimmer of fear in her eyes for a moment as she recognizes you, realizes that you are no fairy tale and that you do exist. The reaper coming for her soul. 

You are sent there to bring her to your master, but you refuse. You will not. She is not deserving. You will kill her instead, prove to your master that you deserve to stay his and that you are all that you need. 

You underestimated the strength of sea dwellers. 

So many times you have seen them fight in wars, seen them mow down trolls before them like it’s nothing. Somehow, you must have forgotten, or maybe you thought yourself excluded because of your master’s favor or your own telekinetic abilities. Whatever it is that made you so foolish as to challenge a pink blood head on, it costs you your life. 

In your throes, you are strangely calm. There is no struggle to carry on, no grasping at the ground or struggle for air. No pleas for your master to save you. 

You are serene. Grateful. Death is something that he cannot take from you. You do not know why you hadn’t figured it out sooner. If you had killed yourself when you were young, you would have saved yourself the eternity of being English’s puppet. 

The Empress watches you die. Watches your blood pool and your air leave you. She seems proud of herself. She has bested death, after all, struck down a devil. Soon another one will come to claim her, and this one you know she will not be able to defeat.


End file.
